Sunday, October 11, 2009

CNN's John King believes Washington, D.C. is out of touch with the rest of America

During a conversation about the Obama Administration's decision to overtly take on Fox News, CNN's John King reports - for benefit of persons around Washington - that middle America:

Dislikes Obama's principles and policies

Especially dislikes Obamacare

When King says "polarization", he is speaking of anger at Obama and at Obamacare:

In your travels, Wolfe - I travel quite a bit - and in your travels, you do get this polarization, and that is what the White House is worried about.

King feels he must report this because Washington area residents believe Fox News, as a ploy to increase ratings, is proactively ginning up opposition to Obama. King feels he must report - to noncomprehending persons in Washington - that middle Americans dislike Obama even before Fox News interjects coverage which CNN and Washingtonians believe is unfairly slanted.

King's assumption - that Washingtonians have no clue about the rest of America (an assumption which likely has merit, btw) - reminds of an American newspaper which spoke of creating a type of foreign correspondent who would cover red state/conservative America, reminds of University of Colorado's campaign to endow a chair in "Conservative Studies", reminds of NYT's stated plan to assign an anonymous reporter to scour the topics which conservative blogs are talking about.

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Related:

Hollywood's Lionel Chetwynd is an interesting person. He shares interesting opinions. In their PJTV Poliwood series, Chetwynd and Roger Simon discuss Roman Polanski's defenders in context of the disconnect of the elites. PJTV link

Unrelated, yet in some ways more interesting, Chetwynd and Simon discuss why David Letterman believes he can crack some jokes and skate away from his infidelities and hypocrisies. PJTV link

They believe Letterman has faith in the protection of his own edgy personna. Problem: what used to be hip is no longer hip. Simon: "People who are 'edgy' are now square. 'Edgy' is the new square." Chetwynd:

Here's what happens: Hollywood pursues edge. Every time you go to a meeting: "Can you make it a bit edgier?"[...]Entourage is a very edgy show. But [they want it] to get edgier. So, from where it began, which was kind of interesting ... it's now just strings of bad language, and it's lost any meaning that it may once have had....

That edginess, in which everything gets reduced to a kind of animal behavior, which happens in everything they do in show business - in everything Hollywood does about itself - creates in the audience a sense that everything [i.e. every accomplishment] is about luck.[...]Edginess for it's own sake is disappearing from television, and the shows that are beginning to succeed are the shows that are more traditional. And that may be a statement of the hard times, or it may be possibly due to [audience] satiation with the smart asses.